Gruffudd Hiraethog was a Welsh language

Welsh language

Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

 poet, born in Llangollen

Llangollen

Llangollen is a small town and community in Denbighshire, north-east Wales, situated on the River Dee and on the edge of the Berwyn mountains. It has a population of 3,412.-History:...

, north-east Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

.

Gruffudd was one of the foremost poets of the sixteenth century to use the cywydd

Cywydd

The cywydd is one of the most important metrical forms in Welsh traditional poetry.There are a variety of forms of the cywydd, but the word on its own is generally used to refer to the cywydd deuair hirion as it is by far the most common type.The first recorded examples of the cywydd date from the...

 metre. He was a prolific author and gifted scholar. Though he was member of the medieval guild of poets and notable upholder of that tradition, he was also closely associated with William Salesbury

William Salesbury

William Salesbury also Salusbury was the leading Welsh scholar of the Renaissance and the principal translator of the 1567 Welsh New Testament.Salesbury was born in about 1520 in the parish of Llansannan, Conwy...

, Wales' leading Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 scholar. In fact one of the first Welsh books to be published was Gruffudd's collection of proverb

Proverb

A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...

s in 1547, Oll synnwyr pen Kembero ygyd ("The sense of a Welshman's mind collected together").